After hearing about the 5.16-carat, honey brown diamond found at the Crater of Diamonds State Park on July 31 by 12-year-old Michael Dettlaff of Apex, N.C., Tana Clymer and her family from Oklahoma City, decided to experience Arkansas’s diamond site for themselves.

During their first visit to the Crater of Diamonds, Tana found a 3.85-carat canary diamond while surface searching over the park’s 37 ½-acre search area. The yellow diamond is teardrop-shaped and about the size of a jellybean.

According to Tana, she’d been digging and sifting in the dirt for about two hours, then surface searching for 10 minutes, when she noticed the diamond on the surface of the search field.

“I thought it was a piece of paper or foil from a candy wrapper,” she said. “Then, when I touched it, I thought it was a marble.”

Tana told park officials, “I think God pointed me to it. I was about to sprint to join my family, and God told me to slow down and look. Then, I found the diamond!”

Tana said she said a prayer of thanks, and named the gem the God’s Jewel diamond.

Assistant Park Superintendent Bill Henderson said, “This canary diamond is very similar to the gem-quality, 4.21-carat canary diamond found at the Crater of Diamonds by Oklahoma State Trooper Marvin Culver of Nowata, Oklahoma, on March 12, 2006, a gem he named the Okie Dokie Diamond.”

On average, two diamonds are found a day by park visitors. The colors of diamonds found at the park are white, brown, and yellow, in that order.

Henderson said, “No two diamonds are alike, and each diamond finder’s story is unique, too. She’s either going to keep the diamond for a ring, or, if it’s worth a lot, she’ll want that for college.”

Henderson noted that with this diamond, the current trend continues of visitors finding diamonds on the surface of the search field. Due to good rains this spring, and some especially hard rains this summer, many of the recent large diamonds were found right on the surface. Diamonds are a bit heavy for their size, so a good downpour will wash the dirt away, leaving the diamond exposed.

The search area at the Crater of Diamonds is a 37 ½-acre plowed field that is the eroded surface of the eighth largest diamond-bearing deposit in the world, in surface area. It is the world’s only diamond-producing site open to the public.

In addition to diamonds, semi-precious gems and minerals are found in the park’s search area including amethyst, garnet, peridot, jasper, agate, calcite, barite, and quartz. More than 40 different rocks and minerals are unearthed at the Crater.

The park’s policy is finder-keepers. What park visitors find is theirs to keep. The park staff provides free identification and registration of diamonds. Park interpretive programs and exhibits explain the site’s geology and history, and offer tips on recognizing diamonds in the rough.

Many factors help visitors who like to surface search for diamonds at the park. Park personnel regularly plow the diamond search area to bring fresh, eroded diamond ore to the surface. Then, erosion from heavy rains concentrates the heavy rocks and minerals, like diamonds, in the low-lying parts of the search area.

In total, over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed at Arkansas’s diamond site since the first diamonds found in 1906 by John Huddleston, the farmer who at that time owned the land, before the site became an Arkansas state park in 1972.

The largest diamond ever discovered in the United States was unearthed there in 1924 during an early mining operation. Named the Uncle Sam, this white diamond with a pink cast weighed 40.23 carats.

Notable diamonds found by park visitors since the state park was established at the site include the Amarillo Starlight, a 16.37-carat white diamond discovered in 1975 which ranks as the largest diamond ever found by a park visitor.

The second largest find by a park visitor is the Star of Shreveport, an 8.82-carat white gem unearthed in 1981. In 2011, a visitor from Colorado found an 8.66-carat white diamond she named the Illusion Diamond, which is the third-largest gem registered here since the Crater of Diamonds State Park was established in 1972.

Crater of Diamonds State Park is on Ark. 301 at Murfreesboro. It is one of the 52 state parks administered by the State Parks Division of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.

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